The Richest Latino in America

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Chapter 1: Ricardo Barrera Vasquez - Why are Latinos Not Wealthy?

Ricardo Barrera Vasquez had a good life, as a matter of fact, if you were to ask any member of his family what they thought about his lot in life they would have said that he was riding high on the hog. He had a good, dependable job just outside of San Antonio, Texas, working as a manager for a company that produced heating cables. The pay wasn’t great, but it was enough that he and his wife, Ann Marie Ramirez Vasquez, a school teacher, could afford to live comfortably. His children, Johnny and Carla, had never known what it was like to go hungry, and although they had never been able to give their children everything they desired Ricardo and Ann Marie knew that their children had never truly wanted for anything.

Yet Ricardo (Richard or Rick, depending how old the friend) wasn’t quite satisfied, and he couldn’t put his finger on the cause. One Sunday afternoon after morning mass, seated around his mother’s kitchen table watching the various members of his family come and go, he asked himself, “What is it that I’m missing?” He looked at his parents. They were comfortable, getting by on his father’s pension and living in the home that his grandparents had built when they first crossed the border from Mexico and stepped onto American soil. The house wasn’t fancy; they only had two bedrooms, and the furnishings were old and worn, many of them made by his grandfather’s own hands. The rugs were worn where three generations of feet had stomped across them, the bathroom showed signs of water damage where the pipes had flooded years ago and there had been no money to replace the walls and floor properly, and the screen door had been fixed countless times. Yet his parents were happy, content to sit in their comfortable home that wasn’t quite in vogue and watch their grandchildren run as wild and free as the wind across the front of their small yard.

He wasn’t content. The thought hit Ricardo like a bolt of lightning from heaven, and he sat up in his chair with a jerk. He wasn’t content with his life. He didn’t want to sit and watch the world go by as his parents did, looking out their windows and hoping that the roof didn’t decide to fall in on them one day. He was tired of watching other people live his dreams while he sat back and counted his pennies and thanked El Dios Bueno every day that he had a good job that kept his family fed. He had had enough of seeing how other people took exotic vacations and drove exotic cars and sent their children to expensive private schools while he worked through his vacations in order to earn extra money, drove a second-hand Ford that he had bought from his cousin Mike and watched his children step on the bus every day to go to a school that was ripe with drugs and violence. “Just once,” he thought, “I want to live the life that my heart tells me I was born to lead.”

The rest of the night Ricardo sat back while his family reveled in the games and fun that always accompanied these gatherings at his padres’ house. He laughed when his youngest brother’s son came walking down the stairs in his grandmother’s dress and treated them all to a slightly altered version of “Goodnight Irene”, and he doled out the necessary punishment when he caught his oldest sister’s boy attempting to drop a frog down Carla’s dress, but his heart just wasn’t in it. He couldn’t stop the sharp press of guilt that swept over him when he looked around at the friends and family laughing on the front porch and spilling out of every entrance of the house and realized that good friends and good family weren’t enough for him anymore. It didn’t sit well with what he had always been taught about the importance of family and money, and he felt a bit like a bug in a web as he looked at the smiling faces surrounding him and felt trapped in the legacy that his grandparents had built.

About halfway through the evening his brother Rudy noticed his strange behavior, and with a kiss for his wife he crossed the kitchen, grabbed a couple of beers from the fridge and wrapped his arm around Ricardo’s neck, dragging him outside. As they stepped out onto the (miraculously) quiet back porch Rudy handed him a beer, popped the top off his own and drank deeply, staring up at the stars.

“You know,” Ricardo said softly, “when we were little I always thought that I’d be able to go see those stars one of these days.”

Rudy snorted. “Bro, the only way you were gonna see stars was if Joe managed to get a good swing behind that right hook of his.”

Ricardo had to chuckle at that. “Good thing little bro never did get any strength in those puny arms of his, or I might have actually been in trouble as much as the two of us used to pound on each other.”

The two brothers stood in companionable silence for a little bit, lost in the memories of their misspent youth and the amount of time their madre had spent applying her hand to their backsides in an attempt to ensure that her children didn’t grow up to juvenile delinquents (if Ricardo had a dime for every rosary his madre had forced him to say for his sins he’d never have to work again). Rudy finally leaned back against the porch railing, crossed his booted feet out in front of him and said, “So, you gonna tell me what’s cooking in that head of yours tonight or are you going to make me drag you out in the yard and beat it out of you? I gotta tell you, I like the second option best, but Maribel’s gonna kill me if I rip this shirt.”

Ricardo had to grin at the thought of his six foot brother quaking in his boots in the face of his tiny wife’s wrath, but the longer he thought about it the less funny it seemed. Maribel might be little, but she was meaner than a snake-and eight months of pregnancy hadn’t done great things for her disposition. He could see his brother doing his best to stay on her good side.

“I don’t know, Rudy. You know how Mama and Papa always taught us to be happy with what we had, and to thank El Dios Bueno that we weren’t stuck in Mexico starving on the street corners? I’m sick of being happy with what I have. We’re not in Mexico, we’re in America, and I’m tired of being content with being a middle class Hispanic, Latino, whatever I am, just because my grandparents came across the border instead of the Atlantic. I don’t want to be a middle class Latino. I don’t want to be a middle class anything. I want to be rich, Rudy.” He turned to his brother, his eyes gleaming as he began to warm to his subject.
“I want to be able to buy Johnny a car when he gets his license in a few years so that I don’t have to worry about him rattling around Texas in some piece of junk fixer-upper that Mike glued together and is going to break down every three weeks because we don’t have the money to pay the insurance premiums to buy him a new one. I want to be able to buy a house with a yard and room enough for that dog that Carla’s been begging for. I want to get the kids out of that barrio school they’re going to and put them someplace where they’re going to learn about more than how to keep their heads down so they don’t catch the attention of some pusher. I want Carla to go somewhere where she’ll have a fighting chance to finish high school and go on to college, not drop out of school at fourteen and have three babies on her apron strings before she’s twenty. I want Ann Marie to be able to quit her job if she wants to and not have to put up with the constant attitudes of the kids she teaches.”

Ricardo looked up at the stars, desperation and heartache replacing the enthusiasm in his expression. “She’s been there eighteen years bro, ever since she finished college, and she says it gets worse every year. She sees old men and women in the eyes of twelve year old kids, and I’m so scared that Carla and Johnny are going to end up like that. I want more for them. I want to be able to take them on expensive vacations, and I want to be home on the holidays instead of going into work because the idiota that was supposed to come in had too much to drink the night before and the work landed on my shoulders. I want to have the money to make my own choices in life.”

Rudy looked at his brother in surprise. “Not that there’s anything wrong with being rich little bro, but do you really think you’re going to be able to do it? It’s gonna be hard; I don’t care what anyone says on television, these gringos aren’t going to like seeing a Latino man trying to rise up in their world, and that’s exactly what you’re going to have to do. You’re going to have to meet them on their terms. You think you’ve got it in you?”

Ricardo sucked in a deep breath of air, then carefully let it out. “I’ve been thinking about this, Rudy. Si, up until now I always kind of figured that living rich was for the people whose great-great-grandparents were here long before abuelo was ever born, but why should it be like that? I’m willing to work just as hard as they do; more so, half the time. Why should I settle for less? I have to tell you, right now I’m willing to do just about anything to get out of this trap I’m stuck in.”

Rudy looked at his little brother, then with a sigh he reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He lit one up and puffed on it for a moment, staring at the ancient porch swing in quiet contemplation, before reaching back into his pocket and pulling out a well worn business card. He fingered it for a moment before handing it over to Ricardo.

“Here you go bro. You really wanna give being rich a try, you give this guy a call. He’ll be able to tell you how to get started.”

Ricardo read the name on the card and felt his pulse begin to pound with excitement. Roland Serna. He didn’t know him, but he certainly knew of him. Everyone knew Roland Serna; he was probably the only man in their community that had risen above his roots to become truly wealthy, and he gave back to the world he left behind as often as possible. Roland was a good man; he often helped out or spoke at the various Hispanic community events that Ricardo and his family attended regularly.

“Roland Serna” Ricardo murmured softly. Roland had everything that Ricardo had ever dreamed of; he had a beautiful two story home, built in classic Spanish style, resting on ten acres just outside of the city limits. He had an in-ground pool that had made his family the envy of every child in the neighborhood and his very own golf course green and one acre fairway to practice on whenever he felt the urge. Rachel, his wife, was able to stay home and spend her days looking after their four grandchildren, who came to visit often as their parents lived only an hour away from the home where they had grown up. Yes, if anyone knew about overcoming obstacles and becoming a success it was Roland, and Ricardo made up his mind then and there that he was going to give him a call as soon as possible to find out what he’d done to get where he was at-and whether or not he, ordinary Ricardo Vasquez, could do it too.

“Thanks Rudy,” Ricardo said, attempting to nonchalantly pocket the card even though his hands were shaking so badly that he was afraid he was going to drop it. Rudy noticed, but he refrained from commenting. He understood how it was to want something more; hadn’t he felt the same before he’d married Maribel? He settled for slapping his brother on the back before walking in to see how his wife was faring.

On the drive home that night Ricardo was very quiet, and Ann Marie and the children all looked at him in concern. It wasn’t like him to walk away from Sunday dinner at abuela’s without a bounce in his step and a sparkle in his eye. What could possibly have gone wrong? Ann Marie quickly ran through the events of the afternoon in her mind, trying to determine if anything had happened that could possibly account for Ricardo’s strange melancholy. One of his brothers, perhaps, giving Ricardo a hard time? No, the only one of his brothers that ever got under his skin was Joe, and he hadn’t even been there; off cavorting somewhere with his latest girlfriend and undoubtedly to be blessed the next morning with both a hangover and the wrath of his madre pealing down upon his head. It wasn’t a result of Joe’s antagonism, and Ricardo had never before so much as batted an eye at the good natured teasing that the rest of his family doled out as freely as they did the rice that adorned their tortillas. She recalled him stepping aside as some point in the night to speak with Rudy; could there have been bad news? Something wrong with Maribel or the baby?

She let the subject slide until they were in the house and the children were on their way to their rooms, threats of an early morning hanging over their heads. As they went to their bedroom to prepare for bed Ann Marie stepped quietly up behind her husband and slid her arms around his waist.

“Are you going to tell me what was going on tonight Rick? You barely spoke a word all evening.”

Ricardo reached down and squeezed his wife’s hands. Dear Ann Marie. They’d been married for nearly nineteen years now, since the day after her college graduation, and not a day went by that he didn’t count his blessings that she had chosen to marry him when she could have had her pick of any other man in the state. He looked at her reflection in the mirror and felt his heart ache when he saw the dark circles under her clear blue eyes. She was a marvel, his Ann Marie. She taught all day at the middle school downtown, then came home and cleaned the house, made his dinner and tackled the monumental task of raising two adolescents-and somehow still managed to have a smile on her face when he walked in the door every evening.

“Rick?” Ann Marie nudged gently. She hated to disturb her husband’s privacy, especially when it was something that he was so obviously reluctant to share, but this mood of his was so strange…She was afraid that if she didn’t get to the bottom of it as soon as possible the opportunity would pass them by. She had no idea that her husband’s thoughts were centered on her, and she felt her stomach jump nervously when he reached down to take her hand and guide her to the bed. This was a sign that Ricardo wanted to have a “serious” conversation; the last time this had happened, it was to let her know that he had been offered the position of manager but would be required to work overnight shifts. Those nights had bled together to form the worst six months of their marriage, and Ann Marie was having nightmarish images of another six months of watching their marriage fray at the seams in the name of progress. Ricardo’s next words, however, were the last ones she expected.

“Ann Marie, what would you say if I told you I wanted to quit my job?” All she could do was sit there and stare at him, thousands of questions swimming through her head. What was he talking about? He couldn’t quit his job! Why would he even want to? He enjoyed his job; granted, it wasn’t perfect, but what job is? She was completely bewildered. What would become of them? She had been teaching at the middle school long enough to ensure that she brought in a decent salary every year, but it certainly wasn’t enough to pay their mortgage, to say nothing of their health insurance benefits. Why would Rick just forget about all that? He was the one that had pushed so hard to get the job, claiming he was doing it so that he could give their family the security they deserved. What had changed? Had he been fired?

The last she asked out loud. “Is this a hypothetical question, or were you fired and now you’re afraid to tell me?” “No!” The horrified look on his face was enough to reassure her. “No, nothing like that. Everything at work is fine. The thing is, I’m sick of working for nothing.” “Nothing? You call this house, our children’s futures, our future, nothing?” “No! That’s not what I meant! Dios, I know how important our security and our children’s future is. It’s not that I’m forgetting about it, it’s that I want to do more to make our lives and their futures become what we want them to be, not what we think they have to be.”

Ann Marie was staring at him with a look of complete bewilderment (and more than a little irritation) and he leaned forward to take her face in his hands, cursing himself for messing this up so completely in such a short amount of time.

“Ann Marie, I come home from work every day, and do you know what I see? I see your eyes growing more tired, less hopeful as time goes by. I see Carla and Johnny growing up far more quickly than they should, accepting their lot in life without complaint because someone in the government dictated that it should be so. I see my family rocking beneath the waves of the adversity that we face because we’re treading water instead of swimming forward.”
His voice dropped, deepened as he looked deeply into the crystal brown orbs that held his entire future.

“I want more than that for you all. I want Johnny to have a chance to grow up to be a fine, upstanding young man. I don’t want him to be let astray into breaking the law, just because he thinks that is the only way to get material things in life.

“And Carla. Do you know what the dropout rate in our kids high school is? Thirty percent. Thirty percent of the girls drop out before their senior year, and almost all of them do so because they suddenly find themselves going from being children to being mothers. Carla’s brilliant, you know that as well as I do. I want her to have the chance to be recognized for something other than being the only girl in the tenth grade that hasn’t gotten knocked up yet. I want her to go to a school where she can concentrate on her studies, maybe even have the chance to go to that Ivy League university she keeps talking about.”

He looked away from her then, feeling the words catch in his throat.

“I want to make a change for you too.” He held up his hand as she started to protest, begging her for silence. She obligingly closed her mouth, but the look on her face said that it was a temporary situation, so he’d better make his point quickly.

“I know you love to teach, but I hate to see you coming home at night so exhausted and frustrated. I want to be able to give you the opportunity to walk away from peddling knowledge to pre-teens that couldn’t care less about what you have to say because they’re too worried about where their next meal is going to come from. I see it take a piece out of you every day as you try to give these kids the strength and courage to do the things they’re probably never going to do, and I have to wonder how much more of yourself you can give before there’s nothing left. I want you to have a choice. If you want to teach, fine, but I want to give you the chance to teach at a school full of minds that want to learn. If you want to walk away from all of that and spend the rest of your life teaching our children and grandchildren, that’s fine too. I want you to finally be able to do something that makes you happy.”

“I want to do this for myself too. Perhaps it’s wrong, perhaps it’s selfish, but I desperately want to do this for myself. I’m tired of spending my life making other people happy while I get the short end of the stick. I’ve spent the past ten years putting in overtime and playing up to the right people to get where I am today, and I have to tell you, I’m getting pretty tired of it. I want, just once, to work in a job where I’m doing something for me. I want to be able to enjoy my vacations, instead of spending them on call and inevitably ending up “filling in” because someone else decided they wanted the time off as well and the man on top knows that since we need the money I’ll be willing to do it. I want to drive a car that doesn’t cough black smoke every couple of weeks, and I want to be able to look forward to my retirement instead of being afraid that the estupidos in charge will squander the social security fund before I get to it.”

“I want to be able to give you and the kids everything you’ve ever dreamed of, everything I promised you when we first got married. I know you wouldn’t ever complain, but we planned for so much more from our lives.” His eyes filled with tears at this point, thinking guiltily of just how much he had let his wife down. “We were going to go to the coast, remember? We wanted to buy a cabin, and you were going to teach at a small little school while I built my own business. We were going to spend our days working and our nights walking beneath the stars. You were going to stay home and home school our children when they were born, and we’d live like we were living in the sixties all over again. Maybe it’s foolish, maybe it’s naïve, but I want a second chance at living our dreams.”

Ann Marie sucked in a deep breath, considering carefully what her husband was asking for. It seemed so little, really; they had given up quite a bit in the name of security, and perhaps now that the children were growing older it was time to stretch their wings a little bit, take a few more chances with their lives. She couldn’t say that she hadn’t seen it coming; she had noticed that Ricardo was growing more restless day by day as he went to work, although she didn’t think he realized it. The question was, could they do it? 

“I’m as big a fan of moving ahead as the next person,” she said gently, “but have you given any thought as to exactly how you’re going to go about making this dream of yours a reality? Dreams or no dreams, we’ve got two teenagers who still need to eat, and I can’t imagine they’re going to be willing to survive on the Spaghetti-Os and Ramen that we’ll be able to afford living on my paycheck. We need health insurance, and we’ve still got a mortgage on the house. Those are all things that we need to consider carefully before making any decisions.”

Ricardo had to smile. Leave it to his ever practical wife to completely disregard the idea of being rich and worry about things like groceries and health insurance. Most of the other women he knew would have started shrieking in delight at the thought that they would have access to an unlimited bank account, but not Ann Marie.

“I thought about all of those things, and I don’t plan on quitting my job until I know that we’re going to be okay with wherever we go from there. I do plan on making this happen, Ann Marie, and I’m going to make sure that you and the children never have to suffer because of my decision. Dios, you, Carla and Johnny are my life. I would never do anything that I thought was going to hurt you.”

Ricardo looked at his wife, holding his breath, desperately hoping that she would be willing to stand behind him on this as she had so many other things throughout the years. It didn’t matter how determined he was to reach his goals; without Ann Marie’s support he knew he’d never have the strength he needed. That aside, he would never place his family in an untenable position; if Ann Marie truly felt that he was chasing pipe dreams he would say no more on the subject.

“All right, so where do we go from here?”

He could hardly believe it. No questions, no demands, just total and complete faith. It was more than he had hoped for; he had expected at least a small amount of skepticism, perhaps even some outright doubt, and her unwavering trust left him speechless and shaken. He finally managed to pull himself together enough to answer her question.

“Rudy gave me Roland Serna’s business card tonight, suggested that I give him a call. I figure if anyone can teach me how to succeed without giving up everything I have, it will be him.”

Ann Marie considered this carefully. She knew of Roland Serna; it was hard to find anyone in the Latino community that didn’t know him. He had started out life poor as a church mouse, the grandchild of immigrants that had come across the border from Mexico when he was a baby. His grandfather had been a vaquero at one of the local ranches, his grandmother the cook and housekeeper. Roland’s parents had met on that ranch, his father becoming a vaquero as well and his mother the daughter of the foreman. Roland had worked side by side with his father until he finished school, earning a scholarship to Southwest Texas State University to become the first in his family to earn a college degree and, eventually, become successful & wealthy. Yes, if anyone could point Ricardo in the right direction it was Roland Serna.

“All right, so you give him a call tomorrow and see what he has to say, and we make our decisions from there.”

She gently reached out and pushed back an unruly lock of her husband’s hair, feeling herself melt at the look of gratitude in his eyes. It never failed to amaze her that after so many years she was still as crazy about him as she had been when she was a college freshman. If this was what it took to make him happy she would stand behind him one hundred percent, regardless of where this path took them. In the meantime, though…

“Now that we’ve talked about our dreams, what do you say we call it a night? We’re not going to be rich by tomorrow, which means that some of us still have to get up for work in the morning,” she said with a teasing smile.

Ricardo’s face split into a grin as he rose, taking Ann Marie with him as they finished their evening preparations and tucked themselves into bed. She snuggled up on his shoulder as she always did, sighing contentedly before drifting into sleep, and as he turned out the light Ricardo thought he was the luckiest man in the world.

He wasn’t feeling nearly as confident the next morning as he stood in his kitchen with the phone in his hand, staring at the number on the card in front of him. Ann Marie and the children had already left for the day, wishing him luck on their way out the door. The dishes had been done, his paperwork for the day gathered together, and he was out of excuses for not making the call.

“You can do this, the worst he can say is no” Ricardo reminded himself as he stared at the number pad, trying to force his uncooperative fingers to take that first step. He knew once he made this call there was no going back; for better or for worse, if Roland was willing to help him he would be committed to seeing this through. Taking a deep breath, he punched the numbers as quickly as possible and lifted the phone to his ear. He almost hung up as it begin to ring, but just as he was taking it away from his ear he heard a feminine voice on the other end say, “Hola?”

“Buenos Dias” he said, wiping his sweating palm on his pants leg. “May I speak to Roland Serna please?” “Si, one moment please, señor.”

The wait felt like an eternity, although he knew it had only been a few minutes, and Ricardo found himself growing even more nervous than he had been when he started.

“Roland Serna.”

Ricardo took a deep breath. This was it; the moment that could decide the rest of his life. He closed his eyes and took the plunge.

“Buenos Dias, Señor Serna. I’m sure you don’t remember me, but this is Ricardo Vasquez.”

“Señor Vasquez, Buenos Dias. Of course I remember you; you’re Carla’s father, si? My grandson still speaks of her often. What can I do for you?”

Ricardo smiled at that. He had forgotten that Carla had baby-sat for the Sernas’ grandchildren when their church had held an event last spring, and it somehow made the conversation both simpler and more difficult; he didn’t want it to seem as though he was trying to take advantage of Roland’s acquaintance with his daughter.

“I had forgotten that your grandchildren knew my daughter. I trust everyone is well?”

“Very well, thank you.” Ricardo could hear Roland’s smile through the phone as he spoke of his grandchildren. “The oldest has just turned twelve, and he’s giving his parents gray hair. I must say that it brings me no end of amusement, as his father did much the same at that age.”

He laughed, and Ricardo felt a bit of his nervousness melt away. It was easy sometimes to forget that underneath his money Roland was a person like anyone else, and hearing him speak of his children and grandchildren with love in his voice reminded him that he was speaking to a man, not a figurehead.

“Mr. Serna, I don’t want to make it seem as though I am taking advantage of our minute acquaintance but I was hoping I could convince you to spare me a few hours of your time. You see, I’m trying to make a change in my life; I’m tired of being at the bottom of the food chain, used and abused by the people at the top because they know I can be. It is not, however, so easy for a Hispanic man to rise up in this world, and I wondered if you would be willing to tell me how you did it, and perhaps point me in the right direction.”

The line was silent for a moment, and Ricardo found himself holding his breath; what if he said no? Just as he had almost convinced himself that this had been a bad idea and opened his mouth to apologize to Roland for wasting his time, he spoke.

“That’s a bit of an unusual request Señor Vasquez, but I’m always willing to help someone who wants to break free from their designated lot in life. I’m afraid I have a full schedule this week, but why don’t you and your lovely wife come to dinner Friday night? Rachel would enjoy the company; I’m afraid that I work far more than she would like, and she’s beginning to feel a bit isolated. We can talk business after.”

Ricardo could hardly believe it. He was willing to help, and was extending his hospitality as well. He could barely manage to drag his mind back long enough to answer in the affirmative and wish Roland a buen dìa before getting off the phone. He couldn’t wait to tell Ann Marie! Could it be that Ricardo Barrera Vasquez was about to find out. ‘Why Latinos are not wealthy?

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